11 Riverside Road

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1935 date mark on the wall

The first telephone exchange for Newport and Wormit was based from 1884 in the old Royal Buildings, Newport. Wormit’s first exchange was housed from around 1906 in the house at number 13 Riverside Road. By the 1930s new purpose-built premises were required and so new exchanges were built in both Newport and Wormit.

Here in Wormit the building in our photograph at 11 Riverside Road was the new exchange, opened in 1935. These early exchanges were operated manually, with the telephone operator connecting one caller to another. With the arrival of digital technology in the 1960s and 1970s these local exchanges were no longer required, and, as in many other places, the exchange was converted to a house in the 1980s.